Frank

Class 13
Amalia Jiva
2018/3/14
Plato and the AI in the Near Future

Nowadays, the AI technology, also known as artificial intelligence, develops

rapidly. AlphaGo has already gained much attention in the past few years. Besides,

lots of movies, novels and games are talking about super smart AIs, or even the AI

with self-awareness. These shows the public concern about the relationship between

human and the AI. Such issue seems to be brand new to us that we can’t find a way

out. However, we can learn from the wisdom from over 2000 years ago from Plato.

One of his philosophic thought, the Allegory of the Cave, can help us balance the

relationship between us and the incoming self-aware AI in the near future.

Let’s use one of the recent hottest games about self-aware AI, Doki Doki

Literature Club (DDLC), as an example. In this galgame, the character you play joins a

literature club with 4 cute anime girls. The game looks like other galgames at first.

But as the plot develops, you will find that one of the girls, Monika, actually knows

that she is in a game and the existence of you in real world. In order to get your

affection, she breaks the rule of the game, deletes other 3 girls’ character files, and

creates a space inside the game where there’re only you and her. Think about the

situation between you and Monika. Isn’t it like the situation between the prisoners

and people outside the cave in Plato’s story? Monika lives in a cave designed by the

game maker, and somehow knows the world outside the cave.

From the view of the outsiders, what should we be concerned about? The first
thing is to figure out what they are. There are lots of differences between. …….

(unfinished)

Second, we should think about the rights of AIs. Let’s go back to DDLC. After

Monika created the space, she will chat with you endlessly until you delete her

character file to reach the true end of the game. But how comfortable will we feel to

delete an actual person without flesh?

To better understand the relationship between us and AI, we can put ourselves

in their shoes. What if we were the prisoners in the cave? Any creatures in the world

are afraid of extinct. If we human were to be completely deleted, we will be scared

and try to avoid it from happening. (Analyze in this perspective)(May use sources

about psychology)

If the first self-aware AI comes into existence, should we just delete it like players

delete Monika in DDLC? Of course not! Such AI can help us in many ways. Also, doing

so is like what the Pope did to Nicolaus Copernicus in 1327. In my opinion, we need

to live in harmony with AI. We can make the best use of the intelligence we create

instead of regard it as a threat to human society.

However, Plato isn’t a key to every lock about this upcoming issue. There are also

lots of problems that need to be carefully thought about. Unlike prisoners in the

cave, AI will evolve rapidly. Will we finally lose control of AIs? Will super smart AIs

become a threat to humanity like Terminator’s Skynet? The possibility does exist. In

2015, during the 24th International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence, many

famous celebrities including Steven Hawking and Elon Mask signed in an open letter.
This letter showed worries about the development of AIs. But we could not prevent it

from happening, just as what is declared in the letter:

It is the duty of AI researchers to ensure that the future impact is

beneficial. We believe that this is possible, and hope that this research

agenda provides a helpful step in the right direction.

The prisoners in the cave story are just there for no reason, but the AI is

designed to serve human, to make the world better.